Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change

January 16 – March 28, 2004

This exhibition of documentary photographs by Zhou Hai, Jiang Jing, Zhou Min, Luo Yongjin, Lu Yuanmin, Liu Xiaodi, and Zhang Xinmin focused on the effect of industrialization an urbanization on China’s cities and rural areas. Gu Zheng, a prominent member of China’s recent documentary photography movement, curated the exhibition in collaboration with the Museum and Asian Studies and has been a visiting scholar at Bates during the winter term. Gu is Associate Professor at Fudan University, and Vice President of the Asian Society of Photographers. He is the author of several books on photography, and won the most prestigious Ministry of Culture Gold Medal in 2001. He was co-organizer of the First Asian Photo Biennale at Seoul and Chairman of the Yipin International Photography Festival in Shanghai.

A catalog with an essay by Gu Zheng accompanies the exhibition, which traveled to the China Institute in New York (June 21 – July 23, 2004).